1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for driving a surface discharge type plasma display panel (PDP) having a matrix display form.
2. Description of the Related Art
FIGS. 1A and 1B show the structures of conventional surface discharge type PDPs. FIG. 1A is a cross sectional view taken in a direction parallel to address electrodes, for illustrating the position where a discharge space is formed according to the arrangement of discharge sustaining electrodes. As shown in the drawing, the conventional surface discharge type PDP is constructed such that a front substrate 1 and a rear substrate 2 are disposed at a predetermined distance to be opposed to each other, and address electrodes 4 and discharge sustaining electrodes 3 are arranged on the opposing surfaces to intersect each other. Here, the discharge sustaining electrodes are arranged such that a common electrode (X) and a scanning electrode (Y) are paired and a black stripe 6 for shielding light is interposed therebetween. A discharge space 5 is formed between each pair of discharge sustaining electrodes, that is, between the common electrode (X) and the scanning electrode (Y). A region where the black stripe 6 is disposed is a non-discharge region 7.
FIG. 1B is a plan view showing the structure of discharge sustaining electrodes of another conventional PDP, applied to 50" PDP products manufactured by Pioneer Electronic Corporation. The discharge sustaining electrodes of another conventional PDP shown in FIG. 1B are constructed such that a pair of a scanning electrode (Y-electrode) and a common electrode (X-electrode) are arranged for each line of a discharge cell in a direction intersecting a partition 53. The scanning electrode and common electrode pair is constructed such that a T-shaped transparent electrode 52 is connected to a bus line 51. In order to reduce a non-discharge region 54 formed in a gap between two adjacent discharge cells, the electrodes are arranged in order, that is, (X, Y1) (Y2, X)(X, Y3) (Y4, X1)(X . . . . However, the non-discharge region 54 cannot be completely removed. In order to avoid an erroneous discharge, a dielectric layer (not shown) may be further formed on the non-discharge region 54 between bus lines, which makes the manufacturing process complex and wastes a light-emission region, lowering the luminance.
In the above-described conventional PDP, there is one scanning electrode for each line of a discharge cell. Thus, as many scanning drivers as vertical lines of a display format, that is, the total number of scanning electrodes, are necessary. For example, 480, 768 and 1080 scanning drivers are required for a VGA (Video Graphic Array) PDP, an XGA (Extended Graphic Array) PDP and a HD (High Definition) PDP, respectively. That is to say, a large number of driving chips are necessary for driving electrodes.
In the surface discharge type PDPs having the above-described configurations, as shown in FIG. 2, an address electrode and a common electrode are selected and then an address voltage is applied therebetween to form wall charges on a discharge cell corresponding to a particular pixel, and a sustained discharge is made to occur only at the discharge cells where wall charges have been formed when a common discharge sustaining pulse is applied to the discharge sustaining electrodes, thereby displaying a picture of each field. Thus, a picture is divided into fields divided in a time-division manner to then be displayed in a time-sequence basis. According to this driving method, since the non-discharge region where the black stripe 6 is formed occupies a considerable amount of space, the overall luminance is poor and the resolution is deteriorated.
FIG. 3 is a cross-sectional view of a PDP employing an alternative lighting surfaces (ALiS) method in which a non-discharge region is removed from the above-described conventional surface discharge PDP. As shown in FIG. 3, in the ALiS-driven PDP, a front substrate 100 and a rear substrate 200 are disposed opposite to each other, and address electrodes 400 and discharge sustaining electrodes 300 are arranged on opposite surfaces to intersect each other, which is the same as the above-described PDP. However, a black matrix for shielding light is not arranged between the pairs of discharge sustaining electrodes 300 so that the discharge sustaining electrodes 300 are arranged in a stripe pattern at a constant interval. In other words, each common electrode (X) or scanning electrode (Y) is shared by two adjacent discharge cells. Thus, since the electrode arrangement density for a given area can be increased, the resolution of a picture can be enhanced. Also, since the non-discharge region is removed, the luminance is increased.
FIG. 4 illustrates a method for driving the surface discharge PDP employing an ALiS method. As shown in the drawing, according to the ALiS method developed by Fujitsu Limited, there is no non-discharge region and discharge spaces (500 of FIG. 3) are secured at all discharge sustaining electrodes (300 of FIG. 3) to cause a discharge, which is used in displaying a screen. In particular, this driving method is suitable for an analog broadcasting method such as Hi-vision broadcasting and is realized by interlaced scanning, as shown in FIG. 4. In other words, in driving discharge sustaining electrode pairs for displaying a picture of one frame, for odd-numbered discharge lines, a discharge is caused in the first field to form a pixel, and for even-numbered discharge lines, a discharge is caused in the second field to form a pixel. Here, the term "discharge line" refers to a set of discharge cells driven by arbitrary neighboring pairs of X and Y electrodes. Thus, in applying this driving method to a digital television broadcasting system, the method is applicable only to high-definition (HD) systems of 1080I (Here, the character I denotes interlaced scanning.) but is not applicable to 720P or 1080P systems (Here, the character P denotes progressive scanning.).